מהו ניקוד אשראי
Everyone will face Credit Scoring in their life, even if they never have to take out a loan. Credit Scoring originally came out of the need for banks and other lenders, to assess how likely customers are going to repay them. To simplify their internal processes
and be leaner, they outsourced this task to credit scoring companies that maintain customer credit track records and complete customer evaluations based on proprietary formulas. With this, they can provide a number from 1-1000(850) to banks and other lenders,indicating
levels of reliability.
Despite being originally intended for assessing one’s loan-taking capacity, right now credit scoring is used in allfinancial activities, from signing a new mobile contract, to renting out an apartment. It is now a way to know if customers are financially
responsible (שון לפוינט), with it all resting on a 3-digit number. Therefore, having a good credit score is often more lucrative than having an
excellent job (Experian).
עם זאת, למרות אימוץ רחב יותר מאי פעם, האופן שבו ציוני האשראי חושבו והנתונים ששימשו לעשות זאת כמעט ולא השתנו.
מה רע בדירוג אשראי?
Right now, there are three major credit-scoring organisations: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Together they do most of the credit scoring for the USA and UK and are the main trusted source of information about you, the customer, for lenders. To calculate
the score, these companies use several models, FICO being the most popular. In it, they mostly assess how well you have repaid previous loans as well as what types of loans have you had and when.
What is surprising in this model is that it only uses past loans to assess future ones. This results in situations where a person with a well-paid job and savings who lives without credit has a lower score than someone who spends all their income on repaying
credit for previous loans. This situation has recently caused an uprise of financially stable people taking loans, despite having plenty of funds, only to boost their credit scores (אמה
וודוורד).
אנחנו יכולים לעשות הרבה יותר טוב
This is obviously a worrying sign. Not only do we have entry barriers for financially stable people to get a loan, but people are now generally incentivised to get deeper into debt. Of course, it should not be like that. Thankfully, there is something we
יכול לעשות בקשר לזה.
Every day any given consumer generates data that can be used as a clear indicator that they are trustworthypayers. From the way one spends money, activity participation in free time and even social media activity. Allthis paints a much better picture of
whether you will be responsible for your debt or not. Moreover, this information can quickly adjust to new life conditions, compared to old credit scores which are mostly static unless you have an active line of credit.
כמו כן, הוכח ששימוש בנתונים חלופיים, כמו אלה שצוינו לעיל, יכול לשפר באופן דרסטי את איכות ניקוד האשראי, עם דיווחים על שיפור של למעלה מ-50%. (אשראי
Scoring with Social Network Data, ניקוד אשראי קמעונאי באמצעות נתוני תשלום עדינים). And in the days of Big Data, there are no limitations in on building new scoring systems —it
is very much possible.
The new approach would be a great win for many people, especially young individuals who have not yet taken out loans but already have a strong profile. However, we have still not yet seen systems harnessing these benefits, and there is a reason for that —
פְּרָטִיוּת.
דילמת הפרטיות
Clearly, there is an abundance of data that can be used to obtain more accurate credit scores, however, this data is usually very sensitive. For example, would you be okay with sharing information about every phone conversation had with an external party
so that they would calculate a better credit score? Probably not, especially if you consider that they might also eavesdrop on you and extract information to sell onwards to advertisers. What about sending over your Apple Watch health and location data? Or
all of your bank transactions?
דאגת הפרטיות הזו הייתה המחסום העיקרי. יתר על כן, למרות שישנם מודלים שיכולים לחלץ ציוני אשראי מנתונים אלה, אנו עדיין חיים עם ציוני אשראי חלודים. עם זאת, יש אור מלא תקווה באופק.
חישובים פרטיים
ב-10 השנים האחרונות חלה עלייה מהירה בפיתוח כלי חישוב לשמירה על הפרטיות. אלו כלים המאפשרים אלגוריתמי ביצוע על נתונים פרטיים מבלי להסתכן אף פעם בחשיפת הנתונים.
במקרה שלנו, זה יעבוד באופן הבא:
You would instruct your phone provider to share your encrypted call details with the credit scoring agency. They will then be able to run the credit scoring over the encrypted data, not knowing who you ever called. But as a result, they will get a vastly
improved credit score. A win-win situation for both parties. And this can be done with any kind of data, and even any type of analytics models. Most crucially yet, you can be sure that the personal data you submit always remains private.
Today, there are two main directions of doing such private computations — software and hardware-based. The software approach is based on cryptographic techniques, including solutions such as Multi-Party Computation (MPC) and Fully Homomorphic Encryption
(FHE), still very early in development. The hardware approach consists of special chips called Confidential Computing units which have already been used in the real world to secure sensitive data during computation. The latter technology is currently the
most promising candidate to be used in building the required improved credit scoring model, fully fit for the modern day.
מה יהיה העתיד שלנו?
יש ראיות מתעוררות ומשכנעות (ניקוד אשראי בעידן הביג דאטה) מוכיח שהעידן החדש של ניקוד האשראי אינו רחוק מדי, בתקווה לראות שינויים בעשור הבא.
הרבה בנקים ומלווים פרטיים הבינו שדירוג האשראי עדיין מספק מעט מדי מידע. בשל כך, הם מחפשים באופן פעיל גישה לנתונים בעצמם. פרטיות הנתונים, שוב, הופכת לבעיה גדולה.
However, it is reasonable to assume that with private computation technologies, this will also change, and we will see an increase in data exchanging-related activity. With our consent, our encrypted data could be anonymously shared between services so
they provide better insurance quotes, mortgages, buy-now-pay-later offers, and much more.
חיים בעידן הביג דאטה, ככל שנקבל יותר נתונים, כך השירותים שנקבל טובים יותר. ונראה שהפרטיות, המהמורת הגדולה היחידה בדרך, הוחלקה.
